


Dark Wings, Dark Words

by Netgirl_y2k



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-19
Updated: 2013-01-19
Packaged: 2017-11-26 02:32:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/645577
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Netgirl_y2k/pseuds/Netgirl_y2k
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The king is dead, but a cousin cannot inherit before a brother, or before a sister.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dark Wings, Dark Words

i.

The raven catches up with them six days out from Seaguard, sent on by Lord Jason Mallister.

They draw the longships together and lower a gangplank. Galbart Glover crosses over, shoulders slumped and expression grave.

Lady Maege understands as soon as he hands her the message: The Young Wolf has fallen. The King is dead.

Unwillingly her eyes are drawn onwards, to the list of the confirmed dead - the king's mother, the Smalljon, _Dacey Mormont._

And Maege Mormont, Lady of Bear Island, forgets to breathe, she forgets, just for a moment, to grieve for her king.

*

"You have other daughters, do you not?"

Lady Maege could not expect Lord Glover to understand - he is a man unwed and childless - but he means it kindly, and he has suffered too; his brother taken hostage by the Lannisters, his good-sister and her children in the untrustworthy hands of the Ironmen.

She clenches her mailed fist but does not strike him.

"Four, now." Oh, _Dacey_. "I birthed five who lived past infancy."

"You have been blessed," says Lord Galbart.

*

They speak of returning to Seaguard.

"Mallister is no Northman," says Lord Galbart. "I wouldn't be surprised to hear that the Riverlanders have yielded to the Lannisters already."

It was scant few weeks ago that Lady Maege and Lord Galbart had been drinking and dicing and fighting alongside the River Lords, but Lady Catelyn and her half-Tully children were what bound the North and the Riverlands, and without them old prejudices are quick to resurface.

*

At any rate the bogs have closed in behind them, and any attempt to change course will only result in them becoming more lost.

Onwards is the only way.

*

They would both prefer to take the banners down. It feels godless, flying the standard of a fallen king.

But the Stark banners may be all that stop the Crannogmen abandoning them to the bogs. And so they fly King Robb's direwolf standard at half-mast.

 

ii.

They are nineteen days out of Seaguard when Greywater Watch appears out of the morning mists.

Howland Reed welcomes Lady Maege and Lord Galbart to his hall; he is man of slight build but lordly bearing, and Lady Maege can well see why Ned Stark considered him a friend and ally.

For the first time she allows herself to question their purpose in coming here. Their king is dead, his army scattered and beyond all aid.

Galbart Glover produces a letter from his tunic, sealed with Robb Stark's direwolf. "We bring word from the King in the North, concerning his chosen heir."

*

"You are sure of this?" Lord Galbart demands.

"I was at the Tower of Joy with Lord Stark, I saw the child with mine own eyes," says Howland Reed.

Sitting in front of a roaring fire, drinking warmed wine to keep the chill of the Neck from their bones, Maege Mormont and Galbart Glover have just become two of only three people alive who know the truth of Jon Snow's birth.

"This changes nothing," insists Lord Galbart. "He is still Robb Stark's named heir, the king put his seal to the letter."

Lady Maege says nothing. She had shared Lady Catelyn's doubts about naming Jon Snow heir, albeit for different reasons. Lady Catelyn had feared for her children and future grandchildren, Lady Maege could not help thinking of her own brother. Jeor loved Bear Island truly - his sister and nieces too, not that the gruff old bear would ever say so - but Bear Island could be sinking into the sea, his house fallen to ruin, and still he would not leave the Wall. The vows of the Black Brothers are not so easily broken, especially among those who take them freely.

"It does complicate matters," says Howland Reed. "After all, a cousin cannot inherit before a brother."

"King Robb had no living brothers, and his sisters are more likely dead than not," says Galbart Glover.

Howland Reed looks from one to the other and says, "My Lord, my Lady, I will order up more wine, for we must talk and I suspect it will take us long into the night."

*

It should make things simpler, knowing that Robb Stark's brothers lived through the Sack of Winterfell, but they have no proof that the youngest lives still, nor any way to find him if he does.

And Lord Reed insists, with the sort of knowing that neither of them can bring themselves to doubt, that young Bran will not return from north of the Wall.

Lady Maege and Lord Galbart exchange a look, both thinking the same thing: even a crippled Stark would have been better than any whole Greyjoy or Lannister.

"You seem sure that Bran Stark will not return," Lady Maege says later, when she finds herself alone with Howland Reed.

"Yes."

"You also said your own children accompanied him as guides and protectors. Are they--?"

"Jojen is lost to me," says Lord Howland with a look of infinite sadness. "Meera--- Meera, I pray for."

*

Galbart Glover finds Lady Maege alone, he carries a dead raven in his hand. "One of Lord Reed's bannermen found this drowned in the bog."

Lady Maege removes the parchment from the dead bird; it isn't addressed to anyone in particular, being a general announcement that Jon Snow is the new Lord Commander of the Nights Watch.

_Oh, Jeor, you stupid old bear, what have you done?_

Lady Maege pushes her grief for her brother into the same hole in her heart where she keeps all of her unshed tears for her firstborn daughter.

She turns to Lord Galbart and says, "Well, this complicates matters further, doesn't it?"

 

iii.

Ravens rarely reach Greywater Watch; they get lost, or land and become trapped in the bogs, and they say Greywater Watch itself moves. Lady Maege can't tell, the view from her chamber window looks much the same each morning, but she was raised on the heavily wooded Bear Island, one bit of bog looks very much like another to her.

So, how this raven managed to find its way here... Lady Maege supposes that ill news will find you no matter where you are.

It brings an invitation - a demand - to attend the wedding of Ramsey Bolton, son of the Warden of the North, to Arya Stark.

"Bolton?" says Lady Maege.

"Warden of the North, my arse," is Galbart Glover's assessment of that.

"I thought Arya Stark was believed dead?" says Howland Reed.

*

Lord Galbart wishes to march on Winterfell in an attempt to stop the wedding, but the Crannogmen never leave their lands, and the Glover and Mormont men that accompanied them are too few to fight their way past the Ironmen at Moat Cailin.

"If this wedding takes place then it's all over," he argues.

"I'm not so sure," says Lady Maege, "Lady Arya is of an age with my youngest daughter." 

She remembers the last time she visited Winterfell, little Arya engaging in a three day long running snowball battle with Lyanna and Jorelle.

She exchanges a look with Howland Reed. He has raised one daughter, Lady Maege has raised five, and they both know one terrible thing that the childless Galbart Glover doesn't; even if Ramsey Bolton is a monster of that ilk, until Lady Arya bleeds - if this is even the true Arya Stark - then words said beneath a Heart Tree are not unbreakable.

*

Another raven is found drowned, this one is not intended for anyone in the Neck, but Lord Howland makes sure his guests read its words as they concern both of them.

The message is for the attention of any Hornwood man who remembers what Ramsey Bolton did to his lady, it announces Alysane Mormont's intent to march her men to Deepwood Motte to retake that castle and then join her forces to Stannis Baratheon's to march on Winterfell.

Galbart Glover was one of the lords who misliked the idea of marching to war with women - although his song changed swiftly enough after the first time he saw Dacey Mormont swing her mace into a Lannister belly - but he claps Lady Maege's shoulder and says, "If your daughter succeeds in this then my brother's children will grow up singing songs of her bravery and valour"

Lady Maege laughs, and Galbart continues, "We should join her! We should sail to Sea Dragon Point and stop the Ironborn from fleeing back to the sea."

It would be sweet, Lady Maege thinks, to see her daughter and heir again, to act rather than sit in Greywater Watch having these endless discussions. But what would joining their banners to Stannis Baratheon's be, other than another betrayal of King Robb's cause?

Howland Reed does not look convinced either. But, oh, to see Alysane again, to return to Bear Island and count her daughters...

 

iv.

The raven arrives - alive and croaking this time - before they can make any firm plans to stay or leave.

The message it bears comes from Petyr Baelish, a minor southron lordling who now claims the title Lord Protector of the Vale. It is addressed to all Stark Bannermen and announces that Sansa Stark, eldest sibling and trueborn heir of the King in the North, is safe in the Vale of Arryn, let all true men bend the knee to her.

"Who are true men if not we?" asks Lord Galbart, eager to embark on some, on any, course of action.

"I'm not so sure," says Lady Maege. "I know little of this Baelish, and what I do know I mislike."

"The king would approve of this course," Lord Galbart insists. "He knew he could not trade the Kingslayer for his sister, but the choice pained him all the same."

Lady Maege remembers it well, it was the start of a rift between the king and his mother. She thinks again of Jeor; she does not doubt that the Young Wolf loved his sister, but they are complicated relationships, between brothers and sisters. It does not matter if parents value their sons and daughters equally when the world does not.

"We do not even know if this is the true Sansa Stark," says Lady Maege.

"Then," says Howland Reed in a soft voice that somehow manages to carry, "we must go and discover the truth for ourselves."

*

The Vale will be easier to reach than Winterfell or Bear Island, and it will not require them to pass the Ironborn garrison to the north, but it takes time for them to prepare to depart. The Mormont and Glover men have grown used to months of rest and respite at Greywater Watch, and this is the first time Howland Reed has left his hall since the end of Robert's Rebellion.

"You realise we could be marching into a trap," Lady Maege says to Lord Galbart as they watch over the preparations.

"Into a trap," he replies, "or straight to our queen."

 

v.

Baelish is already gone by the time they reach the Eyrie, and whenever his name is mentioned people's eyes drift to the moon door.

By Lady Sansa's right hand is a familiar face-- Brienne of Tarth, the girl knight who'd been in Lady Catelyn's service.

Lady Maege remembers Dacey attempting to befriend the girl without much luck, less out of disinterest, she had thought had the time, and more out suspicion at offers of friendship.

Lady Maege, Lord Galbart, and Howland Reed take the knee before her. Lord Galbart exchanges a look with Lady Maege, they are both thinking the same thing: they can make a queen of this girl.

Sansa Stark has the look of her mother and brother, which will aid her with the Riverlanders. She is tall, and will get taller, Lady Maege thinks. Dacey had shot up like a weed at that age too, and she had been close to six feet by the time she was done growing.

Sansa meets their appraising gazes steadily, her eyes only occasionally flickering to the moon door or to her knight.

"We come from your late brother," says Lord Galbart.

"And your lady mother," Lady Maege adds, because she recognises the look of a girl who misses her mother.

"Rise," says Sansa. "My lords and lady, rise, please."

*

Later, the four of them are looking out over the Vale. Sansa's knight pacing behind them with her hand on the hilt of her sword. Even with the Crannogmen Howland Reed has brought from the Neck their forces are painfully small.

"They are so few," says Sansa.

"Lord Reed's men know secret ways to return to the North," says Lord Galbart.

"And no real Northman will kneel to a Bolton when faced with a daughter of Ned Stark," says Lady Maege.

"Your Grace," says Howland Reed in that soft voice of his, "did your father ever tell you the tale of the tourney at Harrenhall and the knight of the laughing tree?"

"No."

"If you would allow me to tell you now, Your Grace, that was another time and place where size was of less importance."


End file.
